It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.

------------ Kenneth Grahame

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Dale Favier, Poet

I don't want to think of myself as a poet.Don't want to be anxiously scanning my thoughtslooking for ones that might become poems.Don't want to write as poems things that ought to be prosebecause I am a poet. Don't want to have a business card that saysDale Favier, Poeton it, becausewell, one,most of my poems are not very good,and, two,I don't want to lease out my brain or my spiritto anyone, no matter how good a tenanthe might be. I live here.So I will continue to writemostly bad poems, and I will continue to postthings that aren't finished, and probablyaren't worth finishing, becausesimplyI need a place to live.

I am a poet. Okay. That meansI'm allowed to have affairs and mishandle money:It means I'm more equal than people who write proseand even more equal than people who write nothing.I am a poet, and that means Li Bai and Shakespearewill drink with me in the Elysian fields, surroundedby houris and dakinis.

That sounds nice. But there's such a thingas being too big for your britches.Really I am the halfbreedEugene-Springfield mix,son of the paper mill and the university,both sides of the river, which runs away foreverwith trees on either hand, the green river that,riddling and laughing, pulls down bridgesas it goes; sucking poison from the fieldsand spitting it into the sea; the river, reallyI am the river, I am nothing else. The rainall empties into my throat, and I piss it allinto old Ocean. There's such a thing as being too big for your bridges.